Art History

The art critics of The New York Times have selected their favorites from this year’s crop of art books.  Among Roberta Smith’s favorites is “Simple Pleasures: The Art of Doris Lee,” by Melissa Wolfe, and published by D. Giles Ltd and Westmoreland Museum of American Art.  

“Doris Lee in Woodstock” by our very own Prof. Tom Wolf is featured in this book.

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) is best known as a media theorist—many consider him the founder of media studies—but he was also an important theorist of art. Though a near-household name for decades due to magazine interviews and TV specials, McLuhan remains an underappreciated yet fascinating figure in art history. His connections with the art of his own time were largely unexplored, until now. In Distant Early Warning, art historian Alex Kitnick delves into these rich connections and argues both that McLuhan was influenced by art and artists and, more surprisingly, that McLuhan’s work directly influenced the art and artists of his time.

Riemenschneider in Rothenburg
Sacred Space and Civic Identity in the Late Medieval City
Katherine M. Boivin, Assistant Professor at Bard College
Penn State University Press, 2021

“Riemenschneider in Rothenburg” should be of great interest to art historians and others. It sheds light on a major figure of the Northern ‘Renaissance’ and also on issues of civic contextualization that are of current interest. The scholarship is thorough and careful. It is, in short, an excellent book.” —Richard Kieckhefer, author of Theology in Stone: Church Architecture from Byzantium to Berkeley

–   Professor Touloumi joins other NEH Summer Stipends Awardees in pursuing advanced, new research recognized to be of value to humanities scholars, general audiences, or both. In the last five competitions, the NEH Summer Stipends program received an average of 834 applications per year, and made an average of 77 awards per year, for a funding ratio of 9 percent.

Susan Aberth’s essay, “Juanita Guccione: Reclaiming a Mystical Artist” was published in Juanita Guccione, Otherwhere which compliments an exhibit at the Napa Valley Museum in California. Les Femmes Surréalistes in their Spotlight Gallery runs from October 16 through October 27, 2019. Prof. Aberth will also be speaking at their symposium “Making HERstory: Today, Tomorrow and Yesterday – Reclaiming women in the arts,” October 26-27.

Susan Aberth is an art historian whose area of specialization is surrealism in Latin America. Aberth’s teaching interests focus on Latin American art, African art, Islamic art, and other religious art and practices. Additional interests include African religious practices in the Americas, and the art and iconography of Freemasonry, Spiritualism, and the occult. In addition to her 2004 book Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy and Art (Lund Humphries), she has contributed to Seeking the Marvelous: Ithell Colquhoun, British Women and Surrealism (Fulgur Press, 2020), Agnes Pelton: Desert Transcendentalist (Phoenix Art Museum, 2019), Surrealism, Occultism and Politics: In Search of the Marvelous (Routledge Press, 2018), Leonora Carrington: Cuentos mágicos (Museo de Arte Moderno & INBA, Mexico City, 2018), Unpacking: The Marciano Collection (Delmonico Books, Prestel, 2017), and Leonora Carrington and the International Avant-Garde (Manchester University Press, 2017), as well as to Abraxas: International Journal of EsotericStudies, Black Mirror, and the Journal of Surrealism of the Americas. She received her BA from the University of California, Los Angeles; MA from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University; and PhD from The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Aberth has been at Bard since 2000.

Tom Wolf, Bard College, to speak on Thursday, May 2, 2019
12:30-4:00 pm
New York State Museum, Huxley Theatre

Free and Open to the Public

WAAM honors four to acknowledge their active and enthusiastic support of Woodstock’s thriving and unique arts community and their contributions to its heritage, legacy and future.

WAAM BeauxArts Gala
April 27, 2019
5:30-10:00pm
Saugerties Performing Arts Factory